Paralympics 2012 #2: Alpha Female

On the day of the Women’s Singles Final at Wimbledon and the weekend when Roger Federer is making another appearance in the Men’s equivalent, who better to spotlight than Dutch tennis player Esther Vergeer?

She has not been beaten in wheelchair tennis since 2003 having won 12 World Championship titles, 42 grand slams and 5 Paralympic gold medals (three singles, two doubles). When she won the US Open final 6-0, 6-0 in 2010, she extended her undefeated sequence to 396 matches and has been world number one since 1999. She has only had one match point against her since January 2003 and that was in the singles final at Beijing 2008. Her winning streak is now at 457. That means her record as a tennis Paralympian is better than the aforementioned Roger Federer and explains why she has been dubbed “the alpha female of world sport”.

The alpha female look

Esther on Channel 4, the Paralympics broadcaster London 2012, here and here – speaking to Ade Adepitan and trying to order jellied eels in a Cockney accent